


A Crown of Violets

by Katsala



Series: Wailing At Flowers [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/F, Female Ron Weasley, It Makes Sense in Context, Lesbians, Pining, Ron Is Named Ginny, Sappho - Freeform, Under the Influence of Horcruxes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26919424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katsala/pseuds/Katsala
Summary: “If you forget me, thinkof our gifts to Aphroditeand all the loveliness that we sharedall the violet tiaras,braided rosebuds, dill andcrocus twined around your young neck“-Sappho, I Have Not Heard One Word From Her
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Luna Lovegood/Ron Weasley
Series: Wailing At Flowers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2146635
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	A Crown of Violets

**Author's Note:**

> Edited as of 10/24/20 for typos.
> 
> Edited as of 12/2/20 for typos.
> 
> Edited as of 2/5/21 for punctuation.

The Weasley family’s sixth child is a girl. She gets the perfect name her mother had saved up for her future daughter: Ginevra Molly. Her sister, the seventh, is born a year and a half later and saddled with their mother’s backup name, Celestina Muriel, and is ostensibly loved just the same. 

Fred once joked that Teeny should be glad their father hadn’t been allowed to name her and stick her with something like Ford Anglia Weasley. Teeny, just seven years old, punched him in the stomach and Ginny laughed until she cried. 

It’s weird, Ginny thinks, how something can be a part of you your whole life without you even realizing it. 

The first inkling comes during the Quidditch World Cup. When the Veela started that dance of theirs, Ginny was just as ready to do a header over the railing as Harry was. The twins make fun of her for it just the once, saying the Veela must have been confused by her short hair, you really should stop cutting it off yourself, little sister, and then it’s forgotten. 

Then comes Fleur Delacour, whose mere presence makes Ginny into a drooling idiot. If she hadn’t been down as Harry’s date to the ball from day one, Gin’s worried she might’ve tried to ask Fleur. 

The third strike arrives in the form of Hermione Granger, her hair tied back, her walk confident, her robes floaty and blue and looking soft to the touch, and Ginny had to watch her dance with someone else the whole damn night-

After she and Harry manage to sneak back to the dorms and are laying on his bed with the curtains drawn and their legs intertwined, Ginny asks him hesitantly, “Do you ever think about girls?”

Harry snorts. “Unfortunately. Mostly about Cho. Don’t tell anyone I said that.” He props himself up on his elbow so he can study her face. “Why? Do you?”

Ginny swallows. “Yeah. I just- yeah.”

“I guess that explains why you were staring at Krum and Hermione all night.”

Ginny kicks him off the bed. She doesn’t even feel bad. 

Ginny is great at dealing with her feelings. It’s easy; all you’ve got to do is push everything into the back of your mind and completely ignore it. It works great for her inferiority complex and it’ll work great for this. 

It does work great, until sixth year. It works great until she finds out Hermione has still been writing to Krum, until she goes to Slughorn’s Christmas party as Harry’s date and has to watch Hermione spend the whole night with bloody McLaggen, until she and Harry happen upon Dean snogging her little sister and Teeny is screaming at her that it’s fine, that even Hermione has kissed someone- her stomach turns at that, picturing her second-best friend kissing Krum or, worse, some random, faceless bloke Ginny doesn’t even know-

Ginny’s never kissed anyone. That point sticks in her gut like a knife. 

“Hey, Luna,” Ginny says, sitting down next her her with a thunk. She pulls out her Charms textbook so she can look like she’s doing homework in case the librarian, Madam Pince, walks by. 

Luna doesn’t even look up from her book, which she appears to be reading upside-down. “Hello, Ginny.”

Biting the bullet, as the Muggle saying goes, she asks, “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

Luna turns the page. “No. I think I’d like to one day, though.”

“Cool.” Ginny flips to a random page of her textbook and stares at it. The words look like gibberish.

“Have you?” Luna asks, looking up at Ginny. 

Ginny suddenly feels aware of every flaw in her appearance- all gawky and scrawny with crooked teeth, too many freckles, and her hair choppy and uneven from when she cuts it herself in the bathroom mirror. “No.”

When Ginny looks up, Luna is smiling. She leans over and pecks Ginny on the lips. Their noses bump together. 

“There,” she says, pulling back. “Like ripping off a bandage.”

Ginny’s lips are tingling. 

Dating Luna is surprisingly easy. The weeks pass in a blur of hand holding by the lake and secret kissing in back hallways and Luna’s increasingly complex lion hat that now roars “Weasley is our Queen!” at Quidditch matches and hunting the school grounds for a rare species of fairy nargles. 

Teeny is ecstatic that her best friend and her big sister are getting along. Harry is confused but supportive. Lavender Brown thinks they’re adorable and helps Ginny make Luna a new butterbeer cork necklace for a birthday present. Hermione says nothing. 

Ginny isn’t sure what she’d even want her to say. Luna says that’s normal.

“Here,” she says, handing Ginny a piece of parchment and a quill. “Write down what  _you_ would want to say to  _her_.” When Ginny gives her an incredulous look, she says, “I do this for my mother all the time. It helps.”

The words flow easier than Ginny thought they would. 

[I don’t say it enough to you but you’re a genius. I think you look prettier the wilder your hair gets. I don’t want to ruin our friendship. I’m not dating Luna to make you jealous but I wish you were jealous anyway. I’m jealous all the time. You’re kind of a bitch sometimes. Half the time you make me feel like an idiot and you don’t even realize it and it pisses me off. You care too much about everything and I like that but it makes me sad too. I miss you. I sleep in the same room as you and I see you every day and I miss you. I think I might love you. I love you.]

When she’s done she hands the parchment back to Luna, who lights it ablaze with a spark from her wand. “For the fairy nargles,” she explains. “They’re attracted to smoke.”

Things are weirdly better with Hermione after that. Ginny makes an effort to detangle herself with Luna and start spending more time with her best friends. Luna, she is assured, does not mind, and promptly reattaches herself to Teeny’s side. 

Hermione picks up the habit of hugging Ginny goodnight, which is a bit torturous not just because of the contact- hands on backs and chest against chest- but because it brings home that Hermione does have a soft, squishy side buried deep inside her, and Ginny knows she’d hurt her with the avoidance. 

It’s a sharp reminder as to why she’s in love with her in the first place: that sharp, unyielding intelligence, the practical, almost cold personality, contrasted by the fact that she loves hard and fast and deep, especially for cast-away things that nobody else wanted, cast-away things like an unfeminine, imperfect first daughter. Ginny was doomed from the start. 

Breaking up with Luna isn’t that hard, either. Mostly because Luna does it for her. 

Ginny gets dumped, gently and lovingly, in the Ravenclaw girls’ dorm. It’s only been a few hours since the funeral and Harry’s declaration that they’re going Horcrux hunting. 

“I believe our training is complete,” Luna tells her. “And I really did enjoy it, very much. But now isn’t a good time for something one isn’t serious about.”

Ginny squeezes her hand, a lump forming in her throat. “I’m very serious about you, Luna. You’re probably my third-best friend.” 

“What about Teeny?”

“Teeny doesn’t count, she’s my sister,” Ginny says, wrinkling her nose. 

Luna laughs. 

When Ginny heads back to the Gryffindor dorms she just manages to hold back the tears. It’s stupid that she’s even crying over this, because she and Luna are still friends, because in the end she loves Luna but has never been in love with Luna, because there are a million worse things going on right now- and yet she feels as if a door has been closed on something she had assumed would sort of just… last forever. 

There were a lot of things she’d assumed would last forever. 

When she gets up to her room, Hermione is still awake, and promptly throws herself into Ginny’s arms. Ginny holds her tight, makes a promise that this is not something she’s letting go of. 

The thing is-

The locket is-

Ginny sees clearer now. Every time she wears the locket it’s like a film is lifted off of her eyes. She understands truth, feels truth, knows truth. 

She knows, instinctually, the way those two look at each other. The way Hermione looks at Harry, the way Harry looks at Hermione. She knows, instinctually, that they’ll eventually choose each other over her. She knows, instinctually, that her entire family is going to die in this war. She knows because it’s true and it’s true because she knows it. 

She questions whether or not Professor Trewlaney ever made a Horcrux, because sometimes Ginny can see the future laid out before her like a series of photographs: Teeny will die first, of course, followed by Bill and Fleur. Her parents and Charlie will be killed hours apart. Then comes Harry and Hermione’s wedding, the guests’ seats filled with corpses- Mad-Eye Moony is the chaplain. The twins die, dueling to their last breath, first George and then Fred. As for Ginny, she’ll go last, Percy standing over her, holding the wand, light flashing off his glasses-

Ginny gasps herself awake in a cold sweat. Hermione, across the tent, stirs, asking in a sleep-thick voice, “Is your arm all right? Is it hurting again?”

It is, actually, sharp and twinging. “Nah,” Ginny says, rolling over. She fingers the place where the locket chain has dug into her neck and left imprints on her skin. “It was just a bad dream.”

Ginny can’t even remember what she and Harry fought about before she left. 

She remembers asking Hermione to come with her, though, remembers how that betrayal felt like a knife to the gut. 

And now, having Apparated away, standing in the alley next to the cafe on Tottenham Court Road, the locket miles and miles away, the last of its burning cold clarity leaving her head…

Merlin. Oh, Merlin, what has she done?

She gets found by Snatchers about a minute later. When they ask who she is she gives the first name that comes to her mind, which for some reason happens to be Alicia Spinnet. It’s so typical of Ginny to think of Quidditch even when facing death. 

Harry would’ve laughed at that. 

She tries to find her way back to the camp, but she’s tired and hungry and hurt, and Hermione is too good at warding charms for anyone’s good. After Ginny loses a third fingernail through Splinching she throws in the towel.

Bill looks at her like she’s a ghost when she shows up on his doorstep. He stands there for a full five second, mouth agape, before dragging her inside and hugging her, running his hand through her hair and calling for Fleur. Fleur, for her part, squawks in a completely unattractive way when she sees Ginny and turns it into a group hug. 

It’s just after Christmas, one of the worst in her life. Ginny is lying on the guest room bed, flicking the Deluminator open and shut, and she hears it.

“Ginevra,” Hermione says, and Ginny can picture exactly the expression she would have, eyes rolling but mouth smiling, lips just parted over very clean teeth, her hand brushing her hair out of her face. Ginny actually sits up and looks around the room, expecting to see her there. And suddenly she knows she can go back.

“Bill, Fleur,” she shouts, throwing her shit in a bag, “I’m going!”

“Tell them we said Merry Christmas!” Fleur calls.

Ginny and Hermione make up slowly this time. For the next two weeks Hermione stares at her like she expects Ginny to leave at the drop of a hat, and Ginny doesn’t blame her one bit. At Harry’s advice she tells her about the voice in the Deluminator, which seems to help. She makes a note to herself that she’ll return the favor for him and Teeny someday when Teeny turns thirty and is old enough to date.

Before the battle really gets going, Ginny has a sudden flash of genius. She drags Hermione along with her, saying hello to Myrtle on the way, and this time it’s them descending into the Chamber, not Harry and Teeny. Hermione looks impressed when Ginny pulls off the Parseltongue impression, and Ginny’s on cloud nine already.

“It’s gonna try and fight back,” she tells Hermione as she holds the Basilisk fang above the cup. “It’ll say anything to keep you from killing it. Don’t let it get into your head.”

Hermione nods, but before she can strike something like smoke slithers out and forms itself into Ginny and Harry, a reversal of what Ginny saw in the locket but never told Hermione about. And this version of Ginny is beautiful, smiling confidently and playing with her edgy layered hair and rubbing up against Harry.

“We never needed you,” the fake Ginny says dismissively. “We never even liked you. You’re a nightmare, remember? All Harry and I need,” she says, pulling him towards her, “is each other.” And their lips lock.

“Don’t listen to-“ Ginny starts. 

Before she can finish, the fang has already pierced the cup. It crumples like aluminum foil and lays still on the slimy tiles, dead.

Hermione looks at her with wild eyes. “I’m so sorry, Ginny, I didn’t want you to see that-“

Ginny reaches her in two long strides and kisses her. Their noses do not bump but their teeth do click, and it’s wetter and sharper than anything Ginny ever did with Luna, and she thinks, this is serious. 

They go back to the Burrow, after. There are too many people for the size of the house and no one has the heart to sleep in Fred’s room, especially not George, so Ginny helps Bill and Mum bring all the mattresses down to the sitting room. Everyone sleeps on the floor. 

Ginny and Harry wind up with their legs tangled again, Teeny on his left and Hermione on her right. Just as Ginny begins to drift off to sleep, Hermione mutters in her ear, “I love you.”

Ginny chokes on spit from laughing. “Tell me that again in the morning.”

She does.


End file.
